We Love Budapest: You’ve already played in Budapest on the Sziget Festival’s main stage, back in 2008. Do you have any memories about that concert?
Matthew Murphy: Tequilas, awesome headliners... I remember driving into the festival thinking it looks really weird. I definitely enjoyed the gig! That’s all I can remember.
WLB: What would you say are the main differences between European and American festivals?
MM: American festivals have much stricter rules about alcohol! Since we haven’t done so many American festivals, it’s kind of hard for me to answer this question.
WLB:
It seems that you always wait four years between two albums. Is this intentional, or it just happens that way?
MM: It’s just politics. You know, we could have put the album out a year earlier – not something that I was pushing for, but still. It was like, we’ve decided that this guy produces the album, this other guy does the mixing and and oh, let’s push it back, because we need all this stuff to come together. You know, there is so much bullshit and politics going on, that especially fans don’t see going on, when it comes to making a record – these were the reasons it got delayed again and again.
WLB:
You’ve said in a lot of interviews that with “Glitterbug”, you wanted to go back to the more colorful sound of the first album (“A Guide to Love, Loss & Desperation”, 2007).
MM: I wanted the third album to be more about storytelling, a bit more story-based. The second one was very personal, very introspective. I wanted the follow-up to be a bit more upbeat, a bit more of, hm, not happy, but yeah, colorful.
WLB:
You’ve also said that the album was inspired by Los Angeles.
MM: Yeah! We’ve always spent a lot of time in L.A., and I’ll go back after Lollapalooza and all the festivals we are doing currently, and I was always inspired by cities and stuff like that, so... Los Angeles is one of the weirdest cities I’ve ever been to, you know, there are all these extremely successful people, cohabiting in some cases and just mingling with people who aren’t successful, and that doesn’t really happen in cities like Paris or London. But there are many other weird things; it’s a beautiful, serene place, but at the same time, everyone is in search of something, there are lots of people who’ll never be what they want to be. It’s fucked up.
WLB:
In the video for “Greek Tragedy”, a super-fanatic Wombats fan kills you and your bandmates. What were the most extreme fan reactions that you’ve experienced?
MM: I walked out of a venue with my girlfriend and there was a fan and I went to her, hugged her, and said goodbye, because, you know, she is there at all of our shows and supports us, and she kinda moved on for, like, a kiss. It was weird, and she was 50... And there was one time when I threw a keyboard into the crowd and people totally ripped it apart – it was a toy keyboard, but still! One person claimed that it hit him in the head and knocked him out, and he was talking about suing us for a while...
WLB:
When you released your second album, “This Modern Glitch”, it was followed by an EP, “This Acoustic Glitch”. What inspired it, and do you think that you’ll do the same with “Glitterbug”? What inspired the idea?
MM: I don’t know, man. I mean, we wanted to do some slightly more chilled-out versions of the songs; maybe they didn’t need to be just on piano and cello, but still – and everybody seemed to really like it, so! But with this album, I don’t think that we’d do it, primarily because we just don’t have the time.
